The proliferation of consumer purchasing through catalogues and the Internet has been seen to create an increasingly severe bottleneck around the physical delivery of purchased items to the consumer, and returning rejected items back to the merchant.
As most of the purchased items are physical objects, and as the vendor is typically remote from the consumer, there is a need to physically deliver the purchased item from the warehouse of the vendor to the home of the consumer.
This delivery is currently done via two main methods:                Traditional package pick-up. The merchant sends the item to the nearest point where the consumer can pick up the package. Typically this is the local post office or other package acceptance service. The consumer is notified that a package has arrived for them, the consumer comes to the post office, identifies himself or herself, and the post office hands the package to the consumer.        Home delivery. The merchant sends the package to the consumer's address via its own fleet, or using a commercial delivery company such as Federal Express® or UPS®. The package is then delivered to the home of the consumer, who must sign for it in order to take delivery; alternatively, the package may be placed in the consumer's mail-box or specialized package-acceptance box.        
Both of these methods suffer from clear deficiencies in convenience, cost and security when applied to e-commerce, as well as to other consumer direct marketing.                The main deficiency of traditional package pick-up is inconvenience. The consumer has to come to the post office during limited hours to pick up the package. The special trip to the post office, and the need to park the car, stand in line and carry the package back to the car, removes much of the advantages of telephone or Internet shopping.        Home delivery has two major deficiencies: it is inefficient for the merchant, and inconvenient for the consumer.        
In particular, from the point of view of the consumer, he needs to plan to be at home to meet the delivery, and risks letting a stranger (namely, the delivery person) into the privacy of his home.
Furthermore, from the point of view of the vendor, the delivery driver has to look for an address that he or she may not be familiar with, look for parking in an unfamiliar area, and find and hand-carry the item from the truck. If the consumer is not home, a second or third visit may be required. When the purchased item has a low price tag, such as a book, a shirt or a gourmet food item, the cost of delivery becomes a high percentage of the total cost.
In addition, these problems can still be considered in the context of non-interacting, individual deliveries—the number of delivered items per neighborhood per hour is small enough not to create secondary problems of “friction” between the delivery trips (parking conflicts, disturbing neighbors, occupying elevators).
If the increase in volume of e-commerce meets current estimates, however, namely, a ten fold increase during the next few years, where both the variety of items and the percentage of electronic shoppers will increase—the problems mentioned above will be multiplied exponentially by the friction between coinciding deliveries.
Recently, there have been some relevant innovations, but they do not significantly improve the situation:
1. “Smart Box”—a lock-box service in which a specialized container is placed at the consumer's residence. Delivery services can place items in this lock-box and only the authorized consumer can remove them. This service allows packages to be delivered while the consumer is not home, but it still requires the delivery van to be driven to the consumer residence.2. Package Acceptance Services—various businesses, such as convenience stores, have started accepting packages on behalf of consumers. Employees of these businesses accept packages from delivery companies and later hand them to consumers who come to pick them up. While convenient, these services are limited because they rely on manual handling of the packages. This is costly on a per-package basis. It also introduces an extra risk of mishandling.